Gov. Chris Christie, on the verge of a resounding reelection victory in New Jersey, is prepared to cast his victory there as a sign he can lift the party to victory in 2016 by winning over minority voters who have long shunned the GOP.
“The eyes of America will be on New Jersey on November 5th,” Christie said a few weeks ago, according to The Star Ledger, the largest paper in Newark. “When we have the country looking at us … what they’re going to see is a coalition supporting the governor like no other Republican has anywhere in the country: Hispanic voters, African-American voters, members of the building trades unions, people who live in the suburbs, people who live in cities, people who live on our farms, in the north of our state, in the central part and in the south.”
Christie’s statement was unsubtle and obviously geared at 2016. And polls show Christie could win as much as 30 percent of the black vote and half of the Latino vote on Tuesday against his Democratic opponent, State Sen. Barbara Buono, who has generated little enthusiasm even within her own party.
But his argument, that winning minority voters in New Jersey means he can do so nationally, is not as clear cut as the governor says. Here’s a look at why:
1. History
If Christie won half the Hispanic vote and 30 percent of the black vote in a presidential election, he would not only easily be elected president, but be perhaps the most talented politician of his generation, reversing major historical trends.
In the last 11 presidential elections (starting with 1972, the earliest date for which I had detailed exit polling), the best Republican performance among black voters was 18 percent, which Richard Nixon won in 1972. Gerald Ford won 16 percent four years later, but perhaps reflecting changes in the parties since the emergence of Ronald Reagan, no Republican since Ford has won more than 12 percent of the black vote. The average in those 11 elections was 11 percent for the Republican candidate among blacks.
In 2004, George W. Bush won about 44 percent of Latinos, but Republicans have averaged 31 percent in the last 11 presidential elections.
So if Christie, in 2016, won even half (15 percent) of the black vote nationally that he may in New Jersey, he would perform better than almost any modern Republican presidential candidate.
But is there an obvious reason to think Christie is so singularly unique that a bloc of voters (blacks) that is so strongly Democratic in national elections will make a discernible shift to him? George H.W. Bush (1988 and 1992), Bob Dole (1996) and George W. Bush (2004) all broke 10 percent of the black vote, but barely. Running against the first black Democratic presidential nominee, McCain and Romney struggled to get even 5 percent of the black vote.
This data shows that black voters are largely driven by party, not identity or race. John Kerry, Al Gore, Michael Dukasis and Walter Mondale all trounced their Republican opponents among blacks (each won at least 86 percent of blacks) suggesting Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden or another white Democrat could do the same in 2016.
Latinos aren’t as Democratic as blacks, and they are more complicated group to measure, because of their huge growth of the last four decades and their internal diversity (Cubans and Mexicans don’t vote the same). But Republicans have hovered between 24 and 37 percent of the Latino vote for most of the last 11 elections.
Christie getting half of the Latino vote in a national election would also be astounding. George W. Bush spoke some Spanish, had extensive experience campaigning to Latinos from his experience in Texas and was running in a time (2004) before immigration became a dividing line between the parties and the different wings within the GOP. (To be sure, Christie could be running with a Latino running mate, which also be a history-making move.)
2. A more modest shift may not matter
Of course, you say, Christie wouldn’t do as well among minority voters in a national election as he would in New Jersey, but just closing the gap in minority voters would be helpful.
Not as much as you think. In 2012, Mitt Romney, while winning 59 percent of the white vote (only three of the other ten Republican candidates since 1972 matched or exceeded that number), still lost to Obama by about 5 million votes. (66 million to 61 million). He was hobbled by getting only 27 percent of the Hispanic vote and 6 percent of the black vote.
Crunching the numbers, if Christie had run in 2012 and somehow won 11 percent of the black vote, the historical average, he would have won close to 1 million additional black votes beyond what Romney did. If Christie had earned 31 percent of the Hispanic vote, matching the historic average, he would have gained an additional 0.5 million votes beyond Romney. Gaining an additional 1.5 million votes would still have left the Republican behind Obama in the popular vote.
A Republican who carried, say, 13 percent of the black vote and 37 percent of the Latino vote would likely win. But broader trends will require any successful Republican candidate to make substantial gains among minority voters, not just doing slightly better than Romney, or to do even better among white voters. From 2008 to 2012, the percentage of American voters who were white went slightly down, while the number of black, Hispanic and Asians all increased. The latter two groups are likely to become an ever larger part of the electorate in 2016 because they are growing in the overall population, even if blacks decline to pre-Obama levels in turnout.
Also, Romney underperformed among Latinos and blacks compared to past Republicans, but a strong Democratic candidate, like Hillary Clinton, could improve upon Obama’s weak performance among whites. Both Obama (2008) and Bill Clinton (1996) won 43 percent of the white vote in recent years. Obama’s 39 percent in 2012 was among the lowest percentages of any Democrat in the last 11 elections.
3. The Obama factor
Endorsements generate lots of hype, but generally play a very limited role in who actually wins or loses an election. But a great test of this could come in 2016, when Barack Obama is campaigning for the Democratic presidential nominee to black voters. Barack Obama has maintained very high approval ratings among African-Americans throughout his presidency, even as his numbers have fluctuated widely among other groups. A Gallup survey earlier this year showed that Obama’s approval rating has dipped to as low as 34 percent among whites and 49 percent among Hispanics, but never below 84 percent among blacks. It is often above 90 percent in polls.
Anecdotally, it’s clear the president and his wife Michelle are heroes to many African-Americans.
Even if Christie is a Republican nominee who makes direct appeals to African-Americans, he will face a Democratic nominee who will be loudly supported by President Obama, who will cast whichever Democrat who is running as the heir and protector of his legacy, the person who would, for example, keep “Obamacare” in place.
If Obama’s numbers keep dipping overall but remain high among blacks, a likely possibility, Obama’s major role in the 2016 election will be to campaign for the Democratic nominee in black and highly progressive communities while leaving swing areas to less polarizing surrogates.
Obama has barely uttered a word about Buono, who is running against Christie in New Jersey. But a vote for Christie in 2016 would be a vote against Obama’s candidate. This will be an obvious barrier to Christie winning more than 10 percent of the African-American vote.
4. The Clinton factor
Candidates matter, and the person widely expected to be the Democrats’ candidate in 2016 is Hillary Clinton, who is a much more experienced politician than Buono. Most of the current polling about Hillary Clinton does not delve deeply into her appeal to minority voters. But a Pew Research Center survey in June 2012 showed her favorability rating among blacks at 87 percent, an Obama-like figure. That number, compared to her 59 percent rating among blacks in May 2008, in the midst of the tense Democratic primary, suggests African-American voters, like the president himself, didn’t hold any lingering resentment of the Clintons from the primary.
In addition, Clinton and her advisers are well aware of the “emerging coalition” of blacks, Latinos and people between ages 18 and 35 of all races who have powered Obama’s victories the last two elections. Jeremy Bird, who was in charge of the get-out-the vote operation for Obama in 2012, is now advising a group called “Waiting for Hillary.”
If Clinton runs, Christie would face a candidate with strong appeal among minority voters with a team of aides skilled in turning out those voters. The Republican National Committee is hiring people to outreach to minorities in key states ahead of 2016, with some of these staffers working in New Jersey. But this is nothing like the Obama operation Clinton will inherit that helped lead to black turnout actually exceeding white turnout for the first time ever in 2012.
5. The Republican Party
Christie is likely to run as the favorite of the GOP establishment and more traditional wing of the party, much as George W. Bush (2000) John McCain (2008) and Mitt Romney (2012). If he runs, his rhetoric won’t be as anti-Obama as figures like Rand Paul and Ted Cruz, who will compete for Tea Party votes. Christie may downplay the very-conservative Iowa caucuses and focus on states like New Hampshire and Florida, as Romney did in 2012.
Even then, remember that, if he wants to be president, the next election Christie must win is the Republican presidential primary. Bush, McCain and Romney all tried to avoid taking steps in winning that primary that would hurt them in the general election.
Yet, in 2000, Bush campaigned at Bob Jones University, a school known then for its ban on interracial dating. In 2008, McCain abruptly shifted from favoring comprehensive immigration reform to talking tough on the border, while Romney declared his immigration idea was that people here illegally would self-deport, running to the right on the issue to weaken one of his rivals, Texas Gov. Rick Perry.
Christie, who has already praised President Obama on the eve of the 2012 elections for his handling of the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, accepted Medicaid funding for his state from “Obamacare” and annoyed social conservatives by not appealing a court ruling in New Jersey that mandated the state allow same-sex marriages, has already established his centrist bonafides.
There will be a push for him to move more to the political right, particularly in 2015 and 2016 in the primary. One of the defining characteristics of today’s GOP is, outside of any policy stance, aggressive rhetorical criticism of Obama, exactly the kind of tactic that will hurt with black voters. Party activists, as Marco Rubio has learned this year, are wary of immigration reform, even if it might help Republicans win Hispanic voters in a general election.
Can Christie win the primary without using the term “Obamacare” like a epithet? Can he, unlike McCain or Romney, win while maintaining a position on immigration reform that is very close to Obama’s?